Black Forest Cake Revisited

This past weekend, Damián and I went to a cooking class to learn how to make the famous, delicious Black Forest Cake.

You start with the cake base (you can get this from the bakery here so no need to bake it yourself). You then have to take a long piece of string and slice the cake into three sections, cutting the cake horizontally with the string.

Whip up a LOT of cream and cook cherries on the stove with sugar and pudding.

Then, layer:
1. cake base
2. cherry Schnapps
2. cream
3. cake base
4. cherries
5. cake base
6. more schnapps :)
7. cream
8. decorative toppings

Here is Damián adding the cherry layer.

Here is our final product:

As a class, we ended up making 5 cakes - there was plenty of cake to enjoy (and take home)!

Damián did eat three pieces and then we took a 1/2 a cake home. I don't know how we can manage since we have no room in our refrigerator!

Today was a good day

Damián and I signed a lease for an apartment!

We will be moving to the Old Town part of Tübingen on December 1.
It's in the pedestrian zone of the city, a few minutes from the train, the castle, and the market square. It has two-bedrooms and is 75m^2, plenty of room for visitors!

Here are some pictures from the outside:

We will be living on the 2nd floor (3rd floor according to the U.S. tradition of considering the ground floor to be the first floor) of the greenish looking building. The storefront is a family-owned, third generation, optometry office.  The owner does not speak English - Damián said he wanted ways to practice his German!

Everyday, I wake up and count how many more days we have to stay in this tiny studio where we are now. The move cannot come fast enough!

The Fall Holidays

The Fall Holidays

Halloween is not a big deal here. People were dressed up, but I didn't see anyone trick-or-treating in my neighborhood.  October 31 and November 1 are holidays and all of the schools were closed the entire week for the fall break so most people took the long weekend to travel.

Even though Halloween isn't a big celebration, they do love the pumpkin.
Last weekend, Damian and I went to a restaurant and ordered everything from the "Kürbiskarte" aka "Pumpkin Menu"

Yummy!

Halloween celebration in the U.S. trumps that from here, but Christmas may be a different story.  For several weeks, the small grocery stores have slowly started to fill all imaginable free space with Christmas chocolates and Christmas beer. It's often difficult to get through some aisles.

Here is one aisle at the small local grocery store were I go

All of that is Christmas chocolates and there is more than just this in my little grocery store!

Right behind the Santa Claus chocolates, they sell vats (800g) of Nutella!

Here were two delicious Christmas beers that I tried recently.

Germans are so much healthier than Americans yet they have the 2nd highest beer consumption per capita (Czech Republic is first, U.S.A is 12th, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_beer_consumption_per_capita) and over double the annual per capita chocolate consumption than the U.S. (11.39 kg for Germany vs. 5.09 kg for U.S. http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/17/who-consumes-the-most-chocolate/) 

In a few weeks, Tübingen will be hosting their famous Chocolate Festival and their Christmas Market. I'll make sure to post pictures!